I’ve wanted to paint this historical scene
since reading Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”
when I was still in art school back in the early 1950’s. My idea
of what Constantinople looked like in 1453 comes from a sixteenth
century illustration in John Norwich’s “Byzantium, the Decline and
Fall,” a very good account of the final battle as well as having
a portrait of Mehmet II, the Turkish conqueror on the cover.
However, aside from those two helpful illustrations, I paid
no attention to the historical facts. That’s because my picture
has to be interesting to look at in today’s art world, not a
history classroom. Truth and accuracy were avoided
18